{UAH} Interesting Stuff!!!!!!! The Observer - State House feuds part of the Mzee atapanga culture

http://www.observer.ug/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=33808:-state-house-feuds-part-of-the-mzee-atapanga-culture&catid=93:columnists

The Observer - State House feuds part of the Mzee atapanga culture

Columnists

Thursday, 11 September 2014 23:43

Written by MOSES KHISA

Ours is a country of deal-making, brokerage and gambling.

When you visit Uganda Revenue Authority's Nakawa inland port, an army of handlers and hangers-on pounces on you, begging to 'assist'. Assist you to do what? To fill out a form, or something like that, and then help you jump the queue!

Same thing at the cargo section of Entebbe international airport, at least the last time I went there. But then one has to ask, why would a fairly-respected agency like URA allow all sorts of outright idlers to cause undue commotion at its office premises?

Well, that is how things work in Uganda. It is the way the highest office in the land operates. So, why not any other state authority or government office? State House has become the 'clearing house' of every deal and each problem that needs a solution.

From senior government ministers to accounting officers trying to procure contractors; from a peasant who gave food to our 'liberators' in the Luweero bushes to a businessman who supplied goods to government, we all go to State House. So, where else should hangers-on and brokers fancy the most than the ultimate clearing house for the whole nation?

We have heard stories of selling and buying appointments for a meeting with the president. And if government owes you huge chunks of money, to get the president to instruct the Finance ministry to effect payment, a certain powerful official at State House will demand (through an agent) a fraction of the cheque (I suspect it has to be cash, though!) before processing your clearance.

Then the pervasive one: presidential appointments to public offices. Former Uganda People's Congress stalwart, Aggrey Awori, claimed, in the aftermath of the 2011 cabinet reshuffle, that his name had been edited out of the final list of cabinet appointments. More recently, on Sunday, we heard from someone who was at one point deeply involved in that business of fixing things at State House: Charles Rwomushana.

Apparently, when he was appointed resident district commissioner, someone told the president that Rwomushana had declined the appointment, yet he was anxiously waiting for the appointment letter. There is not much left in Uganda by way of decent public institutions that are run professionally and operate according to the laid-down procedures. So, current reports of State House virulent turf wars should be of little surprise.

In a Sunday Monitor interview, Rwomushana had the luxury of warning us of what has now become the standard catchword, mafia.

"The mafia is controlling Uganda, Ugandans cannot defeat them and the president's hands are tied. Actually, we need to liberate him from them. The only way he can liberate himself is by becoming born-again, he has to die and come back as a new Museveni," Rwomushana told Sunday Monitor.

Quite interesting remarks, coming from, of all people, Rwomushana! At the peak of his stay at the 'clearing house,' Rwomushana was reported to be in charge of something called a 'dirty tricks' department. In 2003, when the late Eriya Kategaya, along with Mzee Bidandi Ssali, Augustine Ruzindana, Miria Matembe, Major Amanya Mushega and Major General Mugisha Muntu, etc, were forcefully opposing General Museveni's plans to amend the Constitution, Rwomushana was at the forefront of savaging all these senior NRM figures.

It was Rwomushana who roundly denigrated the Parliamentary Advocacy Forum (Pafo) as a 'malwa group,' of old men and women who had nothing to offer to the country. Is it the same man now calling on Ugandans to liberate General Museveni from the mafia?' Incredible!

But perhaps we need to take Rwomushana seriously (after all he was head of political intelligence, whatever that means) when he avers that the president is hostage to 'mafia' interests, and needs to be liberated.

What we may need to ask, though, is how we got where we are. It has always been General Museveni's modus operandi to position himself as the ultimate problem-solver. One day, army MP Elly Tumwine was asked about what kept them going in the bush during tough times. He said they always clung to the Kiswahili cliché: 'Mzee atapanga' (the old man will find a way).

After the bush, Museveni took kupanga to State House, and that's how he runs state affairs. He kupanga's for whoever has a problem. Invariably, he is surrounded by an army of handlers and acolytes who also get into the business of kupanga. What we have in the end then is a country of kupanga, a State House of machinations and McCarthyism intrigue, as all matters are taken to the 'clearing house.'

State institutions and government bodies have become dysfunctional. The only way to get something done through a public office is if you know so and so, who is a friend or relative of a State House employee, a mzee who can kupanga.
moses.khisa@gmail.com 
The author is a PhD candidate in Political Science at Northwestern University, Evanston/Chicago-USA.

The Observer - State House feuds part of the Mzee atapanga culture

http://www.observer.ug/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=33808:-state-house-feuds-part-of-the-mzee-atapanga-culture&catid=93:columnists

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